Recently, on our Facebook group for parents of children on the autism spectrum, a question was asked about PANDAS, and how Heilkunst can address this issue. The answer to the question is a simple one, but it also requires some explanation. And while the question may be a particular one for parents of ASD children, the issue and the answer should be of interest to anyone struggling with some kind of microbial infestation.

PANDAS is the acronym for “Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal infections”. Like most things these days, it is a fancy name attached to a group of symptoms and then linked to a microbe that is supposed to be responsible.

This is consistent with the prevailing ‘germ theory’ of disease ever since Louis Pasteur proposed it over 150 years ago. There are two problems with the germ theory of disease: one, not everyone who comes in contact with the germ gets sick, so there is another factor operating, namely, the immune system; two, not everyone who gets the symptoms has the germ.

The first problem was raised by eminent scientists at the time, most notably Antonine Béchamp and Claude Bernard in France, contemporaries of Pasteur, who argued that the more important factor in disease was one’s ability to resist any infectious microbial agents – immunity. Béchamp also argued that there were exogenous microbes that could invade a body if weak enough, but that most microbes (bacteria, viruses, fungi) were actually produced by the body as part of a normal cycle of healing and metabolic function, and were not outside invaders. For example, in children who have so-called ‘ear infections’ (otitis media – which really just means inflammation of the middle ear) bacteria are produced by the body to clean up dead cells (acting like garbage collectors) and using antibiotics only serves to stop this process and results in a soggy mess, known as ‘fluid in the ear’. This necessitated, in many cases, surgery to drain the fluid and put tubes in. Most ‘infections’ are really just inflammations started by the body to try get rid of damaged cells and tissue, build new tissue and restore a balance upset by something.

However, Pasteur’s more simplistic ‘germ = disease’ mantra won the day as it provided the appearance of a scientific basis for medical diagnosis and also for treatment (not to mention that it is the basis for a multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry).

The second problem – how to know if a microbe is really the cause of a disease or part of the body’s own healing effort – was recognized and addressed by Koch’s Postulates, which effectively state that for a germ to be considered the cause of a disease, it must be isolated in then identified in all disease cases and then shown to cause the same disease consistently in persons or animals injected with it. However, this standard has more or less gone by the board these days. The SARS epidemic in Toronto a number of years back, a sudden respiratory condition that struck a large number of people, showed how low the standard had become. While the outbreak was blamed on a highly infectious microbe, actual tests and results later published in medical journals showed that only about 40% of people diagnosed with SARS – sudden acute respiratory syndrome – had the virus, and of those who did, there were only traces, often which had to be searched for, compared to the the teeming viral numbers usually associated with an infectious disease. But the virus still is declared guilty for the outbreak.

Today, we face much the same dilemma. We are taught to fear microbes, that microbes are bad, and that if we can make any kind of link, whether circumstantial or even just hypothetical, we need to kill the microbes deemed responsible. There are certain microbes that cause disease, but the list is a short one. Most microbes are there because of a disease condition, not the cause of it. However, once there, they can trigger a number of symptoms that then get labelled as as disease, but is really just a secondary condition or syndrome resulting from a deeper issue or problem.

So, let’s look at the condition called PANDAS. The microbe involved is commonly found in people’s throat, but is kept under control by a healthy immune system; if not, due to too much stress and other factors weakening the immune system, it can result in strep throat. Again, this is not really an infection as much as a battle between the microbe and the immune system over control and territory. Usually this can be resolved without recourse to antibiotics. As Dr. Robert Mendelsohn, the former associate professor of paediatrics at the University of Illinois College of Medicine wrote in his book, How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Doctor, antibiotics are to be avoided and he almost never used them in his over 30 years of practice. Most conditions will resolve readily on their own with no ill effects to the child. He said the same about so-called ‘ear infections’.

So, there is a tenuous causative link between strep and other related microbes and the behavioural symptoms collected under the name PANDAS. This is even recognized by the fact that more recently, PANDAS is being replaced by the term PANS, Pediatric Acute Neuropsychiatric Syndrome. The link with microbes has disappeared.

It is true that some children benefit from treatment for strep, yeast, etc., to the extent these aggravate a situations, as antibiotics, anti-fungals, etc. will kill microbes. However, this improvement tends to come at a high cost, weakening the immune system further and is only really a temporary solution at best. My father likened it to selling sand while living on a sand bar. I liken it to shooting the messenger and avoiding the message (that something deeper is going on and needs to be addressed).

Where does Heilkunst stand on all this?

For Heilkunst, there can indeed be infectious microbes. The good news is that these, such as malaria, cholera, measles, chickenpox, tetanus, yellow fever, hepatitis A and B, etc. can be effectively treated with energy medicine. We also accept that when certain microbes either in the gastrointestinal track or inside the body are out of balance, such as strep or candida, these may need to be addressed acutely, again with energy medicine, but that the real problem here lies in why the immune system is so out of balance that such problems arise. Energy medicine aimed at a secondary microbial problem avoids the problem of side-effects (really the disease causing or iatrogenic effects of drugs), but unless you also address the deeper issues behind the microbial problem, it will keep coming back.

Thus, PANDAS/PANS is the name of a complex condition with various underlying disease causes – traumas, drugs, vaccinations, inherited disease factors, etc. These deeper causes need to be addressed, and in a systematic, logical manner, each case being somewhat different. In some cases, the roots are not too deep and early results can be seen; in other cases, the roots are much deeper and progress is much slower and even for a time seemingly not there. However, our experience over more than 20 years is that consistent, systematic treatment of the underlying causes (based on a broad map we have developed of potential causes in any given case) does produce good results even in the most difficult of case, even where such cases have been labelled ‘non-responders’.

UPDATE: The HCH has posted a video of Rudi discussing this issue on our YouTube channel.

I periodically touch down into the materia medica of the chronic miasms (inherited disease tendencies), and today is the perfect time to have a look at the Sycotic miasm, which is best known through the remedy Medorrhinum. The 8 universal chronic miasms map out over the 4 seasons of the year, 1 pair per season. The Spring Equinox marks the time of year when the daylight will start to overtake the night, and the many implications for new life and rebirth abound through nature.

This time of incredible manic expansion of life is the natural home for this miasm. Medorrhinum is full of extremes in all forms of physical, mental, and emotional symptoms. Here in Saint John, we are already seeing the seasonal extremes of this time of year — last week we enjoyed a couple of sunny 27°C days, while a grey, wet, cold weekend has led to a waking temperature this morning of minus 17°C with the windchill! This miasm is a strong root behind medical conditions such as bi-polar disorder, allergic asthma, and 3D skin conditions, such as warts or skin tags. It is also a very strong factor behind family histories which contain any forms of heart disease.

The general theme running through all the symptoms of this miasm is of an expansion caught by a restriction, which either causes pain, swelling, or inflammation, and a tendency towards exploding outward. In terms of the mental-emotional state and behaviour of this miasm, there are many extremes. Extremes of behaviour and mood punctuate a characteristically brilliant but unpredictable personality, as is often portrayed in the lives of certain creative artists. Aggression and even cruelty are not foreign to this state.

As an artistic impression, you could say that Medorrhinum is represented by the city of Las Vegas — the hometown of “sex, drugs, and rock ’n roll” — where every impulse and wish can be granted, no matter how perverse. It’s interesting that the expression “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” actually represents the emotional aspect of this state of mind. The case study I wrote about last month is an illustration of this state of mind of a guilty feeling which was hidden away inside a little girl.

A drive towards having extremely exciting experiences is characteristic of this miasm. Whether pressing down on the accelerator further than usual on a sunny day with the volume on the radio turned up, engaging in “extreme” and dangerous sports, or pursuing forbidden or perverse sexual experiences, you will recognize this same underlying theme. There is a degree of ‘armoring’ within the medorrhinum state which is attempting to break through at the hand of these types of extremes.

As with all of the chronic miasms, once you understand its most essential characteristics, it becomes relatively easy to identify it as the root of so many varied physical and mental-emotional symptoms. As part of an effective system of medicine, understanding the roots is so much more important than trimming the leaves or branches.

Our health is often something we take for granted until we lose it. As the Joni Mitchell song goes, “you don’t know what you’ve got ’till its gone.” Health is home. We know the territory and how to get around. Life is enjoyable and invigorating. Losing your health is being yanked out of the comfort of home and dumped in a strange city where they speak a strange language and follow strange customs. Suddenly life is a real challenge, and more a matter of survival. You feel like the ‘burned’ agent in Burn Notice.

You might seek help from the official system, but likely discover that the official system isn’t really much help to you in chronic, complex cases and often just makes things worse. There are lots of well-meaning alternative approaches available, but other than closing your eyes and picking one, or asking around for a good recommendation, it’s all a little confusing and uncertain.

If the journey involves more than a walk across the street, or even across town, you need someone with the right map. For some, the journey is not that complicated or long, and common approaches, such as diet, exercise, supplements, can work but what if your journey is more involved? Here the best guide is the one with the best map. Christopher Columbus had access to some very detailed maps, charting features not normally found on maps in his day. Without that, he would not likely have ventured across the ocean.

Most complex, chronic cases involve crossing desserts, swamps, mountain ranges, even oceans to get back to health. An accurate map, and one that covers all the different terrains is critical.

Most maps only cover the physical terrain, and then often superficially; they don’t reveal real topography (mountains, swamps, canyons, etc.) or the deeper underlying geological structures that can impede progress and even block it. Also, most approaches based on the more superficial maps deal with surface issues (symptoms). Without the right map, they cannot get at the deeper underlying causes. If you are stuck in a swamp, they may help you fight off the alligators (parasites, pathogens, toxins, etc.), but they cannot provide a way out of the swamp. Soon you get so focussed on combatting symptoms that you forget the objective is to drain the swamp.

Heilkunst provides the most comprehensive map of chronic, complex health issues we know of. It can help in acute, emergency situations, of course, but it’s real value comes in helping you or a family member to get back to health, or if health has never really been there, to build a strong health foundation.

Treat a symptom and get relief for a while; remove the cause and get relief for life. Health is a journey and the better, more comprehensive the map you use, the further you can go.

Aaah, summer – lounging in a chair, splashing in the water, enjoying life in the sun, relaxing from all the stress of the modern world, listening to such upbeat tunes as You Are My Sunshine.

At least, that’s the way it used to be. Now summer is itself something more to stress out about. The warm, bright, life-giving sun is now to be feared and avoided, and if not, then approached only with an army of sun-screens, sun-blockers and sun-protectors at the ready. We all seem to have all become experts on SPF factors and UV rays. What used to be a simple pleasure has become a guilty pleasure, full of worry and anxiety, particularly for our children. But it doesn’t have to be that way. You can have your cake and eat it too.

Here are a few simple realities:

1. The sun is the source of life, health and longevity.

2. The health benefits of direct sunlight are well-documented in tens of thousands of studies.

3. Even in the case of Vitamin D, a critical element in health, sunlight is the best source by far.

So, why are we so fearful of the sun that we feel we need to protect ourselves against it? In a word: skin cancer, or more precisely (to keep it to one word), melanoma. And yet this widely-known ‘fact’ is a myth.

We cannot live without the sun, and if we armour ourselves against it, our health, and life, suffers.

Sunlight, like all things in life, is subject to two basic rules – you can have too much of a good thing (there is an optimal dose for everything), and how much you can handle depends on your level of health to begin with – the healthier you are the more you can handle. Children learn about the optimal dose early on from Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Baby bear’s bed, porridge and chair, in contrast to those of Mama and Papa Bear, are ‘just right’. Common sense tells us the second is true.

So, the best approach to the sun is to be as healthy as possible, and then you will be able to handle reasonable amounts of direct sunlight without getting burned. If you are not that healthy, then as in all things you have to proceed with more caution. Just as after a surgery or illness, you can’t immediately resume your normal level of activity, you need to ease into direct sunlight slowly, a few minutes at a time. This goes for those who travel to the ‘sun’ spots for vacations. Your body is not yet able to handle the intensity, and 20 minutes a day is enough for the first few days, until you can handle more.

The natural internal radiant energy of your body is able to meet and match the sun’s energy so that it provides all the benefits without any harm. The more radiant energy you provide (‘radiant health’), the more sun you can handle. I am blond-haired and blue-eyed and have been able to handle the sun without any need for sunscreens. Mind you, I follow the old adage, proven by research, that ‘only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noon-day sun.’ This is a good rule of thumb to observe. The sun is most intense between about 11 AM and 2PM generally, and when you are most likely to get too much (‘get burned’). Cultures in more tropical climes developed a way to avoid the sun at this time, called the siesta. You can follow their sage example and stay out of the sun as much as possible during this time. Even when I have occasion to be outside and can’t avoid the sun at those times, I simply wear a hat, which along with shorts and a short-sleeved shirt. The parts that are still exposed don’t get sun-burned and I don’t put anything on except maybe some coconut oil.

Unrefined coconut oil is a great natural way to lessen the effects of the sun (look for USDA Certified Organic or other reliable organic label). Even though it has an SPF factor of ‘only’ 10, that is still enough to block 90% of the UVB rays that are involved in the production of Vitamin D in the body. Coconut oil is also a way to lubricate and hydrate the skin, so I use it if I have to be out in the intense sun, but not otherwise.

If you feel you need to use a commercial sunscreen, here is a site that provides guidance on the best brands.

Remember also that a higher SPF is not really necessary. An SPF of 15 gives you 93% blockage of UVB rays (versus 90% for coconut oil), SPF 30 only 97%, and going to SPF 50 only increases that to 98%. 90% blockage of UVB rays should normally be enough.

If you take one thing from this article today, let it be ‘the sun is life-giving if you use common sense’. Mind you, as my mother used to say, ‘what’s common about it; most people don’t seem to have it’. Let’s hope your healthy tan will show others that you do still have what it takes!

that ‘autism’ is not a true disease, nor a specific disorder? It is simply a label for certain observed physical and psychological symptoms that don’t seem to fit any other box.

The label may provide some sort of psychological relief to the parents (that it is not something ‘more serious’), but often does the contrary, generating stress, as it seems to enlighten without providing any real form of resolution. Autism and Autism Spectrum Disorders are labels that essentially describe a general difficulty in interacting with the outside world and a certain withdrawal into one’s own world. There are as many variations as there are individuals with the label, and the label does nothing to tell you the underlying causes. We seem to live in a world of alphabet soup labels for children – ADD, OCD, ODD, PDD, PDD-NOS, and the list goes on. If we add it all up, with a 1 in 30 incidence of ASD, and a 1 in 10 incidence of ADD (the most commonly ‘diagnosed’ condition) in North America, not to mention all the others, it seems that we are getting close to having somewhere near 1 in 5 children labelled with some form of behavioural, learning or social disorder.

The problem is that these labels lack specificity and different professionals will come to different conclusions as to whether a given label fits or not. Allopathic diagnosis is notoriously difficult in general . When it comes to psychological issues, the capacity to ‘get it right’ becomes even more problematic, as the definitions for each ‘disorder’ is quite general and open-ended. It is a bit like having certain symptoms and then going on-line to find out what they mean only to discover that it could be one of several dozen conditions. Even professionals are not much better at narrowing the uncertainty. In one case we had, the mother felt that her son had ‘recovered’ from autism, but the professional making the ‘diagnosis’ in the first place disagreed. She even went to a different profession, but he concurred that the child was still autistic. I suggested that many professionals suffer from a certain prejudice in what they see based on past labels, and are reluctant to go against them. She then travelled to another city, presented herself and son to a new professional in the field, but this time did not disclose anything about her son, and simply asked for an evaluation. This time, the professional concluded that her son was not autistic – he had some learning issues, but then, said the professional, so did most children in one form or another, himself included!

For Heilkunst, autism itself is not real, but what is real are the various issues, physical or behavioural, that each child may have. What is also real are the underlying causes for these issues. The key is to set up a systematic approach that can get at the complex of causes at many levels in each case. In some cases, vaccinations play a role, in others birth traumas or drugs, emotional shocks, and various inherited weaknesses (some genetic, but most epi-genetic). For most cases, particularly the difficult ones, and the so-called ‘non-responders’, we have to consider all these factors.

Many approaches claim some success in certain cases of autism, such as where the cause is purely a gut dysbiosis, or an overload of toxins. Here therapies aimed at these issues can have a significant effect. But what works for one case, doesn’t work for many, indeed, most others. A one-size fits all approach doesn’t work when the problem is complex. The best approach is one that offers a method for working at a long-term resolution of each individual case based on an assessment of its own particular complex of causes. This method must also be able to distinguish between effects (such as gut inflammation) and cause (such as vaccine shock triggering the gut inflammation). Treating for effects can provide some degree of relief of symptoms (palliation), but generally does not result in fundamental change.

Heilkunst is not a magic solution or quick fix but is an effective system for approaching the complexity of causes of each case and getting consistent results. And yes, it can take time, and even quite some time in the more difficult cases but most would say that it was time well spent.

If you have any questions please contact the Clinic for further assistance at reception@homeopathy.com

If you would like more information regarding Heilkunst and our approach to treatment you can look at the following resources:

Yes, you heard right. The sad thing about SAD is that it affects a lot of people, and comes up in February, creating a lot of disorder on and around Valentine’s Day. It’s no surprise that chocolates are one of the favourite gifts at Valentine’s as certain components of chocolate (the real stuff, not the pretend chocolate) help to alleviate the symptoms of SAD. But while chocolate may help, it can’t cure the underlying cause, which in Heilkunst, is often linked to another of the chronic disease archetypes we bring into this world with us, called Ringworm.

In Ringworm the state of mind is “wants to but can’t”. People suffering from the Ringworm chronic miasm would feel caught in things–that they couldn’t do what they want to do. Even just the thought of doing something immediately seems to bring itself down. They feel they can never meet the expectation of family, friends and society. They have strong dependence on someone they trust and they are very loyal. But then they depend on their loved ones to function. They feel trapped. This is the ‘February blah’s’ or seasonal affective disorder (SAD).

Even the bowel movement shows the characteristic. It is bashful: wants to but recedes. They procrastinate and can never finish something. They are comfortable staying at home. Physically this is the misnamed “seasonal disorder” syndrome. It is a progression from the untreated chronic miasm Tuberculosis. It is caught in the incredible inertia of the winter month of February.

Classically, ringworm is well known as a skin problem. The skin lesion, which is fungal (people sometimes think it is a parasitic worm), is usually circular (but not always) and can be itchy. It used to be quite common in children and produces a characteristic eruption, a round patch of reddish/purplish raised, rough skin that looks like it has worms in it. Ringworm as the skin problem has become rare in our days but continues nonetheless in the more suppressed form.

Acute ringworm skin problem can be treated acutely in various ways, drug and herbal related, including the simple use of apple cider vinegar, and, of course, using homeopathic medicines. But, the chronic form is less easily recognized and even less readily treated other than in Heilkunst.

Chronic ringworm can also manifest as a skin condition (not generally itchy), but more likely in psychological terms, such as a certain angry irritability that comes from the underlying keynote of ringworm, which is “wants to and can’t”. This means that the person is motivated to do something, but then loses all energy/motivation to carry out the wish, creating an internal frustration, but also a certain feeling of negativity that makes them feel and look depressed. It can involve constipation, lack of energy, and digestive issues as well (hunger, but difficulty digesting what is eaten).

If you feel trapped and irritable especially around Valentine’s Day, chances are you might be suffering from this chronic disease pattern. Don’t want to be SAD any more? Consider getting rid of SAD, and getting Heilkunst treatment. And if you still want the chocolates, that remains an option. Valentine’s Day is not as far away as you think. There’s still time to take action!